Movies: An abundance of cuteness fills 'Pandas' documentary

Jody Feinberg The Patriot Ledger

Saturday

Mar 31, 2018 at 6:41 AM

Any film about pandas is sure to be popular given the universal tug they have on hearts. But the IMAX documentary, “Pandas,” goes beyond cuteness to show an unusual collaboration between Americans and Chinese to introduce into the wild pandas bred in a Chinese panda sanctuary.

At the film’s start, tiny fluffy panda cubs are bottle fed and cuddled by caretakers at Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan province, where they were born in captivity. Playful as puppies, they slide face first on their bellies and topple out of baskets, squeaking sweetly, until exhausted, they snuggle together in ball.

From these, Qian Qian (pronounced Chen Chen) is selected to work with Jake Owens, an American conservation biologist, to be one of the first pandas in a “human-assisted reintroduction” program. While panda reintroduction began in 2006, it had used only rescued wild panda mothers to teach captive bred babies.

“This is the vanguard of human-assisted reintroduction," said Drew Fellman, the film’s writer, producer and co-director with David Douglas. "It's using people to give animals the confidence and security to discover their inner beast and explore on their own."

Narrated by Kristen Bell, the voice of Anna in the animated film “Frozen,” “Pandas” opens April 6 at Simons IMAX Theatre at the New England Aquarium, Jordan's Furniture IMAX in Natick and Jordan's Sunbrella IMAX Theatre in Reading. It's engaging and instructive, with the visual intensity and richness of IMAX 3-D technology that brings the audience nose-to-nose with Qian Qian and reveals the majesty of China's mountains, rock formations and waterfalls and New Hampshire's blazing fall foliage.

After creating the films “Born to be Wild” and “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar,” Fellman and Douglas made pandas their next project, inspired by a meeting with Ben Kilham, a New Hampshire man who has prepared more than 150 orphaned black bear cubs to live in the wild. Kilham had been invited to China by Hou Rong, who is director of research at Panda Base and known as “Panda Mom” for the 200 pandas bred and born there.

“Ben had three bears that he was bottle feeding in the house. We had the opportunity to sit in his living room with these tiny cubs in our arms and thought, ‘What an incredible experience,'” said Fellman whose film includes footage of Ben preparing young bears for the wild. “But, still, we weren’t convinced that the story had the adventure element that really makes a great IMAX film. As we were leaving, Ben casually mentioned, ‘Oh by the way, I was just invited to China to help adapt my work to pandas.’ And instantly we knew we had our next movie.”

Over the course of the film, Owens wins the trust of Qian Qian, as he takes her on walks and wrestles with her. As Qian Qian grows from a cub into a 150-pound bear with long, sharp claws and a visor grip mouth, Owens trains in jujitsu to protect himself should her playfulness overpower him.

“I don't know what it's like to be a bear, but I can learn their traits and provide the conditions for those traits to come out," said Owens. "I do it in a safe environment and progressively take away the human element."

As Qian Quian grows, she moves with her mother to Panda Valley in Dujiangyan, where the bigger enclosure has native vegetation and wildlife and people are fewer. Weaned at about 18 months, she then moves to a 50-acre enclosure closed to the public to learn to live on her own. Finally, the day arrives when the gate is opened and she walks into lush, dense steep mountains filled with her sole food source, bamboo.

Mirroring Jake's attachment to Qian Qian, the audience is likely to feel both a twinge of sadness and a sense of accomplishment when she is released. And the film takes on unexpected drama when Owens, back home in the Midwest, learns that Qian Qian has not moved in 24 hours. He rushes back to China and joins others to search the mountains, where they find her, splayed on a high tree branch, frightened and dehydrated with an infected paw wound. For five days, they nursed her with nourishment and antibiotics, until she was well enough to crawl down the tree, receive comfort from Owens and be carried sedated on a stretcher back to the base. It’s a dramatic search, highlighting not just Owens’s deep emotional attachment to Qian Qian, but the panda's trust in him.

"When we started the film, we didn't know what story would develop,” Fellman said. "I wish she didn't experience injury, but I'm pleased that we were able to tell a story that did service to the struggle she went through. I want the audience to experience what it's like to exist in her environment and to come away with an appreciation for who she is."

For his part, Fellman also went through struggles, albeit less serious, which he said are typical for documentary filmmakers. It took several years to lay the groundwork for the film and often took a full day to get just half a minute of footage. Since the film focused only on Qian Qian, instead of multiple pandas, the filmmakers were at the mercy of her moods. Sometimes, she was so curious about the equipment that they had to protect it and divert her with treats of an apple. What's more, they had to climb through dense, steep mountain terrain that often was muddy and wet to set up equipment far from Qian Qian.

"Part of the film feels so intimate, but we're actually nowhere near her when we are filming, because she wouldn't tolerate that," said Fellman, who shot footage of Qian Qian foraging for bamboo and lying on her back chomping as she holds it between her paws. "There are 100 cable lines between the camera and us."

Qian Qian, who will be 5-years-old in August, is healed and lives in a reserve, but is expected eventually to be released again and will continue to wear the tracking collar so researchers can study her as she moves through the dense bamboo forests. Warier now, Qian Qian is likely to be more alert to danger, a quality needed to live in the wild, Owens said.

Another panda, He Sheng, was not so lucky and died after she moved into the wild. The urgency of species preservation makes the effort worthwhile, despite the precarious of success, since only 2000 pandas live in the wild, Fellman said. Currently, the Chinese government is creating a massive panda sanctuary to connect the disparate areas where pandas live, which will protect their habitat and increase mating options.

“With a new program, success is measured not by what happens in the long term, but over decades,” said Fellman, who dedicated the film to He Sheng. "I really believe Qian Qian will be able to go back into the wild. The real success starts when she has her wild cubs."